[Continued from yesterday’s Part 5 and the preceding Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.] By: David A. Smith After a week of working through the Boston Globe story on Chapter 121A, I finally figured out why the Globe ran it at all, and why it was published during the dead times of […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 4 and the preceding Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.] By: David A. Smith In yesterday’s Part 4 on Chapter 121A abatements, we saw that assessing the value of a Chapter 121A abatement depends on precisely what ‘market failure’ the subsidy aims to help cure: derelict property, current tax-exempt (or […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 3 and the preceding Part 1 and Part 2.] By: David A. Smith Through the first three parts of this post we’ve seen something of the case for Chapter 121A real estate tax abatements as part of urban development – the turnaround in blighted neighborhoods, the boost of job creation, and […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.] By: David A. Smith In its first two eras – the Urban Renewal era up through 1969 and the Affordable Housing era through at least 1982 – Chapter 12212A was integral to the redevelopment of Boston (and many other cities in Massachusetts), as it was […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.] By: David A. Smith In yesterday’s Part 1, I established what my source, an article in the Boston Globe (August 1, 2015), did not, just what a Chapter 121A real estate tax abatement agreement is, why it exists in the first place, and how it’s been used for the last […]